PS4A PlayTime: 7th-20th December 2015

Everyone knows that Christmas is a time for giving; however, more importantly, it is also a time for gaming, and the PS4 Attitude team has been doing a lot of the latter over the past couple of weeks, thanks to titles such as Final Fantasy VII (and XIV), Persona 4: Dancing All Night, Star Wars Battlefront, the Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End multiplayer beta, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt and Yakuza 5.

DolphGB

This week has been a tale of Star Wars and frustration. Let’s get to the fun stuff first.

Star Wars Battlefront is a lot of fun. And after seeing the new episode in cinemas (and thoroughly immersing myself – just like I did when Episode IV came out in 1977), the Battle of Jakku map makes a lot more sense. There are times of annoyance though. Every now and then, I’ll jump into a spot that I can’t escape from – an innocuous part of the scenery. Once that happens, no amount of moving, jumping, crouching, or combination of the above will get me back into the field. The only thing left to do is drop a grenade at my feet and wait for the inevitable.

But the big frustration has been with the PS4 itself. I’ve had a whole raft of issues with the PSN, as it claimed that someone else was logging in as me on another box. It even had a different unit down as the primary. Several calls, port forwarding rules, and half-finished SWB games later, I may have found out what the problem really is. I’ll wait a few days before I explain, but it is linked (possibly) to the new higher-speed optical connection from Virgin.

Matt

After a long absence from gaming altogether, I finally had the chance to sit down and actually spend some quality time playing. My game of choice? Final Fantasy VII on the PS4.

This is actually the first time I’ve played the practically legendary game that I’ve heard so much about. The trailers for the Remake look great so I figured I’d get a head start on things and play the original. My first impression is that FFVII clearly still stands up after all these years. The characters look dated, but the environments still look fantastic. While I know of Final Fantasy VII, I actually never really knew how it played besides seeing a few single screenshots here and there, so I was surprised at how the overworld looked and played. I’m impressed by it now, and I can only imagine how people felt back when it was released in 1997.

Also, while I’m not that far into the game, Cloud is massively annoying. I’m assuming he gets better as the game progresses, but right now he’s just this depressingly whiny, stuck-up guy who only cares about himself. That’s not the Cloud I’ve envisioned as the mascot for Square Enix and from his appearances in tons of other games.

It’s been interesting to experience this game finally, and I’m looking forward to finishing it, whenever that may be (I hear it’s rather lengthy). It may not be the greatest game ever made, but it’s still living up to its legacy quite well.

Mitch

Yakuza 5 released last week and so I’ve already clocked in over 15 hours on that! I’ve been waiting for it for a long time as a big fan of the previous games, and I’m happy to finally be able to play the fifth instalment. It’s just as great as I expected it to be, and I’m happy to see Yakuza 0 heading West too! Hopefully the others that have no localisation plans will also make their way over.

It isn’t a PlayTime without mentioning Persona, and I’ve played plenty of Persona 4: Dancing All Night due to its DLC releases, which I believe are done now, so I’m sad about that. It’s one of the games this year I’ve constantly returned to and can’t get enough of, and I’m sure I’ll be writing more about it when we start discussing GOTYs towards the end of December.

I’ve also been playing a few PS2 games that have released on PS4, including Dark Cloud and Rogue Legacy, both of which play and look great on PS4, and the addition of trophies is clearly nice. I’ve given Strike Suit Zero a go as it’s on sale and I’ve wanted to play it since its debut on PS4, so I’m glad I’m enjoying it. I can’t forget about Final Fantasy VII either, which has seen a great release on PS4.

I finally returned to The Witcher 3 which is as great as ever, but I really should be dedicating more time to it. It’s one of the best games I’ve played this year and one of the most engrossing open-world titles around, yet I’ve not spent as much time with it as I’d like to. I’ve also been playing Tales of Zestiria again recently, as well as Rocket League which is great fun but doesn’t keep my attention quite as much as it used to, and I’m not sure it’ll recapture it.

The Uncharted 4 beta ended the other day, and I got my fill of that and am super excited for the full release in March (here’s hoping it doesn’t get delayed again!) as the multiplayer is better than ever – I’ll certainly be spending plenty of time on that. Meanwhile, Street Fighter V is the latest beta to eat some of my time and I’m loving it, although the likes of Ken and Rashid are easy to abuse and Laura feels like there’s little she can do against some of the characters and needs a good buffing!

Outside of games I’ve been watching the original Star Wars movies because although I’ve seen the recent trilogy, I never watched the originals! I’ve been enjoying them and I’m super excited to watch The Force Awakens this week! It’s selling me on Battlefront but I didn’t think much of the beta, and the season pass is hugely off-putting; however, if it’s cheap after Christmas then I might grab it.

I hope everyone has a great Christmas and holidays!

Stefan

With Christmas fast approaching, things have been pretty hectic at my day job, which means I haven’t been able to get much gaming done recently. In fact, the only game I’ve played on PS4 over the last few weeks is Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward (which, by this stage, should really go without saying).

However, more unusually, I couldn’t resist picking up an Xbox One on Black Friday, which has been great so far. Due to my lack of time, I’m yet to try out any of the big exclusive games on the console, but I’m having a lot of fun with Rare Replay. Fair enough, not all of the included 30 games are absolute winners, but you can’t argue with the compilation’s awesome value and sleek presentation.

Stefan Hutchings

My first venture into the world of game consoles was with the PSone, which I received for Christmas in 1999 at the age of nine. Ever since then I’ve been a huge fan of both the PlayStation brand and videogames in general. I have an extremely diverse taste in genres, although my preference is usually for action/adventure games, platformers and RPGs.

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